MacOS Messages spellcheck not working - mistake is underlined-red but no spelling suggestions when right-click

Hello,

Please help!

This has been a problem for me for a few years and it's not 100% of the time - around 60% of the time a misspelled word is underlined red, but when I right click, there is no list of suggested words in the popup window with other right click tasks. 40% it seems to work just fine - (note A- those numbers are a guess... and B- the inconsistency drives me bat-shut ;)

It's very important to understand I do not want autocorrect - I want to correct misspelled words myself, but with the use of suggestions. Right now I default to googling the word which, which for a chronic misspeller like me, doubles or triples the time it takes to text, (and can unfortunately infuse my message with an unwanted vibe of irritation). Also note, right-click-on-red-underlined-word works perfectly well outside of Messages.

My settings are: Monterey 12.4, macbook pro M1

sys pref/keyboard/text:

correct spelling automatically - unchecked

capitalize words automatically - checked

add a period with \double space - checked

right click in messages chat dialogue box/Spelling and Grammar:

correct spelling automatically - unchecked

check spelling while typing - checked

capitalize sentences automatically - checked

• Are there any other places to check settings? the inconsistency makes me think its some deep preference conflict.
• This has happened on both my mac os devices for the past 2-4 years or so, (MBP 2014 and MBP M1) before and after system reinstalls/wipes. I've done both reinstalls over the existing system and clean wipes. So my very-not-expert hunch is either a setting has been somehow buried deep inside some of my preexisting files that I reinstall after the wipe (like contacts or something? ...I do purposely try to avoid bringing over settings, but i may not be good at that..), or this is a generic bug that just affects Messages in general - though I can't find too many people with the same problem.
• The bulk of solutions I keep seeing in the support threads is to enable autocorrect. I 100% do not want my words to be corrected quietly – that leads to issues worse than a misspelled word. I would love to right-click, choose the word from list, and move on.

Anyone else have this issue?

Thanks in advance!